


trompe l’œil

by smokescreens



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Pinocchio Fusion, Inspired by Pygmalion and Galatea (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokescreens/pseuds/smokescreens
Summary: I want to be real, the dancer says to the rain before returning to his pose: neck bent, shoulders curved, and head turned away from the sky.I want to be human.Or alternatively, the story of up-and-coming, New York-based sculptor Jung Jaehyun and his statue turned actual living-and-breathing dancer Lee Taeyong.





	trompe l’œil

**Author's Note:**

> This began as an idle daydream and evolved into the experimental long-drabble or, more accurately, the unfinished fic that it is as of the moment. I'm still figuring out and finalizing stuff for this au (which also means that additional tags will be added as I go), but I really do want to write it. For now, enjoy this prologue of sorts!

Whenever Jaehyun thought about how he’d gotten to where he was today—stomach empty, hair unkempt, and hands and arms sore and powdered from scrupulously smoothing stone with sandpaper—he would always put the blame on Rocky, his palm-sized pet rock who he adopted back when he was nine years old.

It’s been almost two decades since he first picked Rocky up. And approximately seventeen years since his father, who was also a sculptor (and who makes for a better source of inspiration than a pet rock, Jaehyun belatedly realizes), first handed him a mallet and a chisel. Jaehyun had been crying about how Rocky always lost his stick-on googly eyes, and he only stopped once his father offered an ingenuous solution: one that had Jaehyun hammering permanent eyes on Rocky’s stone face.

Now Rocky, or whatever remained of him, sits forlorn among the islands of sketches on Jaehyun’s table, across which Jaehyun himself sat on a wooden stool and pored over his latest work.

From the steadiness with which he studied the rough marble in front of him, anyone could’ve mistaken him for a statue—a modern replica of Auguste Rodin’s _Le Penseur_ , albeit clothed, breathing, and holding a pencil in one hand.

It is in this position that Johnny finds Jaehyun as he unceremoniously enters the latter’s studio, hair and padded shoulders damp from the drizzle outside that had caught him off-guard. Just as abruptly as he had entered, Johnny tosses his umbrella onto one of Jaehyun’s empty couches and says, with a smug grin that Jaehyun hears even before he turns to look at the other, “Thinking hard, aren’t we?”

“You should seriously consider modelling,” Johnny continues, almost as if he knew he wasn’t going to get any form of acknowledgement from his chosen greeting, “Taeil-hyung’s students could use a model who knows how to keep steady like you do, you know? You could even earn a few bucks there.”

“Like I’ve said before, I don’t—” Jaehyun finally says as he sits up straight, downturned lips breaking into a smile as he spots and moves to collect the paper bag from Johnny’s outstretched arm. And, just like that, Johnny’s jabs are forgotten when the contents of the paper bag meets Jaehyun’s eyes and nose.

 “Got your favorite today. Spicy _bulgogi_. I take that you haven’t had lunch?” Johnny strides towards Jaehyun’s table. He seizes a relatively unstained piece of cloth, shakes any dust off of it for good measure, and proceeds to wipe his hair and his face dry with it.

“I’ll eat. In a bit,” Jaehyun mumbles. Although hungry, he sets the paper bag down on top of his tool box, opting to go back to what he was doing before he was interrupted. He picks up a pair of metal calipers and starts measuring the clay model behind the marble, eyes sharp with precision under the room’s dimmed lighting.

Outside, the rain continues to pour, the drizzle turning less affable by the minute. Johnny sighs as he takes in the sound of car horns blaring in the distance. He never liked New York under the rain. One would think that the city’s cold, fast-paced, no-sorrys-spared-when-you-bump-against-someone lifestyle would slow down with rainfall, but it does not. It only turns colder and faster, with people bumping into more shoulders as they selfishly squeeze and arrange themselves like tunas inside cabs, sheds, and dimly-lit bodegas for refuge.

Johnny shivers at the thought of having to fight for a cab on his way home. But, for now, he comes back to Jaehyun’s space and watches as his friend etches measurements and harsh pencil marks against stone. It has always been mesmerizing to watch Jaehyun work.

 _He takes after his father_ , Johnny thinks, briefly recalling the time he’d helped the Jungs set up their fences the first year he met Jaehyun at the suburbs. Johnny was in his last two years in high school, while Jaehyun was the new kid and freshman in town who only spoke once prompted. _Workaholic to a fault_ , Johnny finishes as he stands behind Jaehyun, his tall stature casting a soft shadow on Jaehyun’s work.

“Out of the way, you giant,” Jaehyun says, statement emphasized by the clatter of the calipers that he tosses to the floor.

Johnny takes one step to the side, if only to look at Jaehyun’s work at another angle. He takes the cloth still in his hands and touches Jaehyun’s cheek with it, smiling fondly when the other groans and turns his head to avoid the contact. “That for the exhibit?”

“If it reaches the deadline, yeah.” Jaehyun says, then, “Hey! That’s wet you know?” He swats Johnny’s hand away from him, smearing the back of Johnny’s hand lightly with chalk and pulverized marble.

“Damp,” Johnny corrects. He drops the cloth on top of Jaehyun’s other tools and pats his hand clean. “It looks good. So far.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

This time, he takes a few steps back to properly observe Jaehyun’s latest sculpture. It’s a life-sized, full-body statue, something that Jaehyun rarely ever makes. _But_. Johnny takes a deep breath and exhales. _Maybe it’s best that he doesn’t make them too often_. _They always look too real._

“Yeah. I think so.” Johnny says. He takes everything in, takes the poise of the stone male ballerina in _croisé devant_ as if he’s meeting a person for the first time: the solid yet also seemingly soft and tactile skin and muscles, the smooth flow of the right arm arched and rounded above the head, the other arm and hand outstretched in a manner as if waiting to be held and kissed, the pointed toe, the bent neck, and the passive curve of the lip and look in the eyes.

 “It—No, _he_ looks _too_ real, Jae.” Johnny says, almost out of breath.

Jaehyun lets out a laugh. “You always say that. It’s not even done yet. I haven’t rasped it enough.”

“Even so... wow.”

“No, really though. You shouldn’t even be here to see it. It’s not ready yet. It’s not _real_ enough.”

Johnny glances at the back of Jaehyun’s head, walks forward, and lets his fingers ruffle the already too disheveled hair on Jaehyun’s scalp. “You need to learn how to accept compliments. And also how to comb your hair.” Johnny mock-scolds. “You’re too obsessed, I swear. It’s already as real as stone can get. Well, except for the eyes, I guess. The pupils look bigger than normal.”

Angling his head once again to avoid Johnny’s touch, Jaehyun smiles weakly. He picks up a mallet and a chisel, looks up and arches an eyebrow at Johnny. “Do you mind?”

“Time for me to go already? That fast?” Johnny removes his hand from Jaehyun’s brown locks and puts it over his chest, eyes squeezed closed in faux pain. “Am I just a food delivery service to you now, Jung?”

“You weren’t even supposed to be here in the first place,” Jaehyun mutters as he starts pounding a pointed chisel against the parts of the marble he’d marked with pencil.

“Well, I wouldn’t have _had_ to come here if someone just spared enough time to send his RSVP.” Johnny pauses, waits, only to sigh in defeat when he doesn’t receive a reply. “They’re not sent for no reason, you know?”

Jaehyun continues pounding at the stone, settling in a comfortable rhythm that oddly comes into harmony with the soft pitter-patter of rain against the window panes.

“Come on, Jae. It’s a college reunion. Our old friends will be there. What will it take to make you appear this time?”

Jaehyun hums. Stops his motions and says, “Maybe a quiet night with friends without a stranger who I’m forced to entertain?”

“To be fair, you don’t _have_ to entertain them. They find you naturally entertaining, anyway. A 26-year-old bachelor who’s making a name for himself in the art scene through sculpting and laughs with a dimpled smile? What else would you have to do?”

“Still not going if you keep setting me up.”

“Fine, fine.” Johnny turns around and collects his umbrella. He turns back to glance at the other who he finds is also looking at him with a tired look on his face. “No dates. Just... Just, show up, okay?” Taking his eyes away from Jaehyun’s stare, Johnny looks out of the windows and takes a deep breath before continuing, “... And I know you don’t like going out when it’s raining outside but I haven’t seen you out for almost three weeks. It’s bad to be holed up in here.”

“I know.” Jaehyun says.

“So... does that mean....?”

“Sure, Johnny,” Jaehyun chuckles and, without a pause, he shoots Johnny a thumbs up, smiling as he does so. “Now go and take care.”

 _Classic Jaehyun_ _smile_. Johnny finds himself humming. _I wonder if it’ll ever reach his eyes_. “Take care too,” he says in response as he opens his umbrella in preparation. And, with that, he steps out of the door and to New York’s wet pavements.

 

 

____________________

 

 

_“I love the silent hour of night,_

_For blissful dreams may then arise,_

_Revealing to my charmed sight_

_What may not bless my waking eyes.”_

                                                 —  Anne Brontë

 

 

As the first second past 3AM strikes and thunder rumbles outside and overhead the quiet room, the dancer awakens. His arms lower themselves to his waist as he stretches his neck to the side opposite from where it had been positioned all-day long before looking around, vacant white marble eyes blinking slow and steady as they take in his surroundings.

At this hour and weather, darkness coats the studio like a veil, only lifted up every now and then by the flickering luminescence of the streetlights lined up a few meters from the windows, which served as the surface on which the dancer checked his appearance daily.

Tonight, as he glances from the clay model behind his post and to his reflection double-exposed on a window pane, the dancer promptly notices the modifications that have been done to him for the day. _Hands and fingers_.

Looking down, he lifts his hands with the palms facing up, opens and closes them as he turns his wrists inwards and outwards. He takes his time admiring every nerve and every slight dip of skin that his sculptor had managed to affect after meticulously chipping off or filing down each stray ridge or groove of stone. His skin, or what is supposed to appear as his skin, looks all too real, so much so that it fools him into pinching his arm with the expectation of touching something other than stone.

The action only earns him the usual result: the soft yet equally rough, gravelly sound of stone knocking and chafing against each other.

At once, the dancer’s head drops down in disappointment. A nascent pout begins to sit on his lip before he looks up again—in excitement, this time, as he realizes the delightful implications that come with no longer having webbed fingers. _Hands and fingers!_

The first thing he does is walk towards the sculptor’s table. He quietly picks up his friend, the palm-sized piece of stone who could not move like he did but could look up into his own eyes with a softness that no one would ever expect to get from a solid rock.

 _Look!_ the dancer mouths animatedly. No sound comes out of his lips, but his friend understands him all the same. _He finally gave me fingers! Look at them! Pretty, aren’t they?_

The dancer’s eyes crinkle as he grins and tries to keep his shoulders from bucking forward, pleased by a remark that his friend had made. He nods a moment later. _Thank you. I wish you’d get limbs too. And, yes, his friend did use the cloth that you’ve been sitting on since yesterday._

Suddenly, an alarm rings from the opposite corner of the room, near the worn-out tweed couch where the dancer belatedly makes out the sculptor’s silhouette, lying down and fast asleep on the couch-slash-makeshift-bed.

The phone in the sculptor’s hand vibrates and lights up. And, when the sculptor groans, the dancer tenses more than he ever thought was capable. With his friend still cupped in his hands, he watches as the sculptor moves, swipes his thumb over the phone (effectively rejecting the call), and drops the gadget carelessly to the floor.

The dancer stays still for a few moments, only moving slightly to put a finger over the space where his friend’s mouth should be. He sighs when it seems that the sculptor has fallen back to sleep.

 _He almost got us there_ , he mouths, more to himself than to anyone else. He has never tried fully waking up while anyone was still around the studio. But tonight... _Tonight is different_ , the dancer thinks. Despite the fact that his legs still have ways to go before they look as smooth as those belonging to the clay model behind his post, the dancer already feels more like himself than he did yesterday.

“No... Don’t.”

The dancer tenses once again as he hears the sculptor mumble. He mouths a word that his friend rock disapproves of before putting said friend back down onto the table and turning slowly towards his post. Belatedly realizing that it’s better to pretend as if he’d been moved than being caught actually walking, he stops in his tracks.

“Don’t...” the sculptor resumes muttering, his voice diminishing to a whisper at the last syllable, “Don’t go.”

 _Is he talking to me?_ Hesitantly, the dancer turns around, his shoulders visibly dropping when he finds the sculptor still asleep, albeit with a knot between his eyebrows this time.

 _Oh_. The dancer smiles weakly. _Of course he wouldn’t be_. He doesn’t let himself think about the idea of actually being talked to, of turning around and finding eyes regarding him as someone worthy of company and conversation. _It must be really nice to be hum_ —

The dancer cuts himself off. _Tonight’s different,_ he tells himself, refusing to give voice to the thought he’s considered ever since the day he learned that he was _different_ , that he could not exactly talk to and befriend the one person he wants to be friends with.

 _Tonight’s different_ , he repeats. In the middle of today’s chosen mantra, he finds himself inspecting his hands. He glances at his palms, then to the shadowed figure across the room. Back to his fingers, and once again to the sculptor. _Tonight’s different._

Without making a sound, the dancer crosses the room as nimbly as he can. He lets himself be swept away by the novelty of his abrupt decision and settles near the sculptor’s face, crouching in order to be as close as he could and wanted to be.

From across the room, the dancer swears he could feel his friend’s intense stare, but he stays unfazed, justifying all his actions with the logic that he was not given fingers tonight for no reason. _Just this one thing, and nothing else_ , the dancer tells himself. _I just want to know how it feels like_. He lifts his hand over the sculptor’s face, steels himself for the unexpected, and squeezes his eyes shut, before finally lowering his pointer finger lightly over the space in between the sculptor’s eyebrows.

 _I’m actually touching him_.

 _Jaehyun_ , the dancer mouths, trying out the name he’s heard used a number of times to refer to the sculptor. _Jae_.

In accordance to the dancer’s suspicions, actual human skin is nothing like his own. Against the slender pad of his pointer finger, the dancer feels a softness that he has never felt before. Unlike the couch pillows that he’s tried touching before, the sculptor’s—Jaehyun’s—skin is soft yet at the same time solid; the dancer notes the way his finger does not sink fully into the surface even when he tries to push, recoiling immediately when his action makes the folds in between Jaehyun’s eyebrows disappear.

Having removed his finger from Jaehyun’s forehead, the dancer settles for observing the rest of Jaehyun’s face. He’s seen the man up-close countless of times, especially during the first few weeks when Jaehyun worked solely on his face, but he’s never seen him under this lighting, sleeping as he would sometimes over his desk.

 _“Hair.” It’s what Rocky said it’s called._ The dancer recollects as he lets two fingers sweep away the stray brown locks over Jaehyun’s face. Absentmindedly, he lets the same fingers graze against and over Jaehyun’s eyebrows and eyelashes, notes the way the small groups of hair bend and curl under his touch.

 _To be both solid and pliant, is that what it means to be human?_ The dancer wonders.

“Hyung...” Jaehyun groans abruptly, head bobbing up faintly as his eyes flutter open. “Taeyong-hyung.... is... is that... you?”

The dancer stiffens. Unsure of what to do, he stays in his place, willing himself to be rigid once again. However, before he could, he’s stopped by Jaehyun’s hand, which wraps around his raised wrist and pulls him in closer.

The dancer keeps still as Jaehyun looks up at him blearily, eyes glassy and unfocused amidst the darkness.

He is in the middle of cursing himself for waking up tonight when Jaehyun laughs softly, his hold around his wrist loosening.

“You look... so real...” Jaehyun says, eyes closing once again as his hand finally falls back against the couch.

The dancer stays in place and waits for a few moments until he’s sure that Jaehyun has fallen back to sleep before he stands up and heads back to his post, all the while clasping the wrist which Jaehyun had held.

Back at his post, he briefly turns to the windows. And for the second time tonight, he checks his reflection.

 _I want to be real_ , the dancer mouths. He glances to his friend, smiles softly, and back to the windows, where droplets of rain which look a lot like the fluid that escaped Jaehyun’s eyes before he fell back to sleep stick and fall like shooting stars on the glass surface.

 _I want to be real_ , the dancer says to the rain before returning to his pose: neck bent, shoulders curved, and head turned away from the sky.

 _I want to be human_.

 

 

____________________

 

 

 

It’s the loud ringing on his right side that wakes him up.

Without much thought, he sits up and hangs his head down, chin burrowing close to his chest. His head feels much heavier than he remembers it ever feeling before, and he groans at the way it swings slightly to the right along with his neck and shoulders as his right arm rises on reflex and reaches for an object before promptly dropping down, hard.

The ringing stops.

Inhale. And exhale.

He takes a moment to take in the ensuing silence, feels his shoulders sag at the distant sound of horns blaring and tires screeching outside his windows.

With eyes still laced with slumber, he slides out of his duvet by a swing of his legs to the side of his bed and lets his feet search for his slippers. He stands up, briefly contemplates going back to sleep, before grumbling and making his bed.

A voice in his mind tells him it’s going to be a long day, and he tries his best to fight the thought as he drags himself outside his room and across the hall, eyes still shut and refusing to fully open.

Once his feet finally stop in their tracks and his waist comes into contact with cold marble, he opens his eyes and looks around, wincing faintly at the sudden change of contrast in his vision.

 _Today’s a little too bright for 3AM_ , he finds himself thinking. Then, almost instinctively, he looks for his friend rock, frowns when he’s greeted by nothing but white floor tiles, various toiletries, and an unfamiliar face.

“Oh hello,” the dancer says, voice coming out stronger than he’d intended for the early morning.

The dancer blinks. Once. Twice. _What_ —

He blinks again, feels his breath hitching when the face in front of him does the same. _Wait, did I just. Air?_ _Who?_ The dancer takes in a deep, sharp breath, feels air flow into his nose and out of his gaping mouth as he watches the person in front of him do the exact same thing at the exact same moment.

It doesn’t take him long enough to realize that he’d been staring at the mirror and, when he finally does, he screams.

“You’re not Jaehyun!” the dancer shrieks as he scrambles backwards. He winces as his head hits plastic and vocally curses as bottles and other toiletries fall and land on his face and his shoulders. He watches as the stranger in front of him go through the same thing and—

 _No way_. The dancer finds himself think, opens his mouth and repeats, “No. Way.”

He runs back to where he came from, almost stumbling and falling face-first as one of his knees momentarily give. He reaches the room in no time, and the first thing he does is reach for the phone on the bedside which had been vibrating since who knows when.

He doesn’t bother checking the caller I.D. and presses receive, shaking his head as he briefly considers how he’d known what to do in the first place. He’s never held a phone before. He’s never received a call before. He’s never actually talked to someone before—

“Hello?” the person on the other end greets.

The dancer momentarily puts the phone away from his face to study it, turning it in his hands as if doing so would reveal the owner of the voice he’d just heard. It’s a voice he’s never encountered before.

“Hello? Earth to _TY_? You better be awake right now!” the voice says loudly.

The dancer puts the phone back against his ear, one hand coming up to curl around his hair in frustration as he thinks of what to say back. _Oh, I have hair._

“Taeyongie-hyung? Is that you? Hello?” A pause, then a muffled rustling. “Ah, seriously! Stop scaring me, will you? I can hear someone breathing. Taeyong-hyung—”

“Who’s Taeyong?” the dancer finally says, grimacing and placing a hand over his mouth as soon as the words escape his mouth.

“You’re kidding, right?” the voice says, pauses, then continues, “You. You’re Taeyong.”

The dancer blinks. He transfers the phone to his other hand, opting to use his dominant hand to support him as he lowered himself onto the bed. “And. Who are you?” At that, he receives a loud sigh.

“I told you I didn’t like it when you joked this early in the morning, hyung,” the voice says. “Just be here in 30 minutes, please? We need you.”

“Ah, sorry.”

“It’s alright. I mean, you can joke with me! But it’s just that... Mark’s just being unbearable at the moment and he wants you to come already. So, _please._ We still need to work on that footwork.”

“Okay,” the dancer says, but before he could ask _where_ exactly he had to be in half an hour, the caller had already signed off with a clipped _“Thanks. See ya!”_ He only barely gets to read the caller I.D. before the phone screen shuts off: “Ten,” the dancer murmurs, already doing his best to commit the name to memory despite not knowing exactly who the name belonged to nor what he had to do with anyone named “Ten.”

 _You. You’re Taeyong_ , Ten’s voice repeats itself inside his head.

 _Taeyong_ , the dancer mouths. For some reason, he feels like he’s heard the name before.

Leaving the phone on the bed, the dancer stands up and looks around the room he’d woken up in for the first time today:

It’s tidy, to say the least, the only indication of disorder being the crumpled rug by the doorstep that he had almost slipped over during his rush earlier. The floorboards are a rich mahogany, the deep red finish suggestive of a fairly recent vacuuming and waxing. Rising above and from the floor are clean, white, concrete walls occasionally ornamented by an almost imperceptible crack here and there and a generously-marked calendar which hangs over the desk pushed inside the small alcove at the corner of the room, across the medium-sized bed and a wooden dresser.

The dancer crosses the room and walks towards the desk. And the first thing that catches his eyes is the leather notebook placed neatly at the center of the table. Gingerly, he runs a finger over the notebook, stops when he notices and reaches the golden engraving on its bottom right corner: “Lee Taeyong” it reads.

He grabs it, moves to open it, but is stopped when something falls out of the notebook and onto the floor. Bending over, he picks up the small, white rectangle between his feet and feels his breath hitching once more when he finds that it’s an identification card, complete with a name and picture.

The dancer reads out the information on the card from top to bottom, “Korea Way Institute of Dance. Lee Taeyong. Advanced Dance Instructor.”

 _That name again_. The dancer chews on his bottom lip and thinks on what Ten had said earlier, only to stop when he finally takes notice of the picture on the card.

He drops the notebook and makes his way in front of the bathroom mirror once more.

“Impossible,” the dancer says as he compares the picture on the card to the reflection on the mirror. _All features are the same. Whoever is on the mirror is indeed Lee Taeyong._

The dancer takes in a shaky breath, mouth smiling widely yet also tightly as he continues to stare at the reflection on the mirror—at himself on the mirror. He looks nothing like he did yesterday, the most obvious differences being that he now has skin and hair and basically everything that he did not have when he was made of stone.

He brings the fingers of his free hand to his face, traces his eyebrows, his lips, the bridge of his nose, the sharp edges of his jaw. Everything’s different save for his eyes. The dancer moves forward, peers closer into the mirror. His pupils are still the same.

Stepping back, he finds himself laughing nervously. He glances one last time from the picture on the card to the reflection on the mirror, marvels at the way his eyes dilate and sparkle and no longer stare back at him with white emptiness. A tear or two threatens to escape from his eyes.

“I’m real,” the dancer says in a whisper, smiling, reeling, exhilarated as the realization finally dawns on him. “I’m Lee Taeyong.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think of this chapter/au or talk to me on [ twitter ](https://twitter.com/smokescreens_)!


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